


The Parselmouth Promise

by Lomonaaeren



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Drama, Education, Family, Kid Fic, M/M, Parseltongue, Past Astoria Greengrass/Draco Malfoy, Past Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Rituals, Romance, Single Parent Draco Malfoy, Single Parent Harry Potter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:00:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26036788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: Voldemort’s influence lingers after his death in the form of Parseltongue passed on to the children of everyone with a Dark Mark—or, in Harry’s case, someone who once hosted a Horcrux. As Harry struggles to be a good single father to his son, James, he inevitably runs up against Draco Malfoy, who’s not only a Parselmouth now but attempting to create a whole ritual and school system to benefit himself, his friends, and his son, Scorpius. No matter how much some people don’t like that.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy & Scorpius Malfoy, Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Harry Potter & James Sirius Potter, Hermione Granger & Harry Potter & Ron Weasley, Lucius Malfoy/Narcissa Black Malfoy
Comments: 129
Kudos: 483





	1. The Unforgivable Thing

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably going to be a medium-length fic of around 10-20 chapters. Note that it’s fairly angsty.

On evenings like this, when James had been full all day of tears and wails and unreasonable fixations on Muggle cartoons on the telly that he wanted to watch thirty hours of, Harry sat beside his cot and smoothed his sleeping son’s back and thought about the unforgivable thing he had said to his wife.

Harry knew the mood would pass. He knew he would get up in the morning and attempt to do the best he could for James. He knew that his and Ginny’s marriage probably wouldn’t have lasted given what had happened, and he knew that quitting his Auror job to be a father to James—to _live_ to be a father to James—was the best thing he could do.

It still made him wince when he thought of his and Ginny’s last conversation.

*

“I can’t stand it.”

Harry stood back with his hands in his robe pockets and watched Ginny throw robes and books and hairbrushes and Quidditch equipment haphazardly into her trunk. He knew he should speak up, say something, convince her not to leave him. If nothing else, she had a duty to James.

But he was just too tired.

“I can’t _stand_ it,” Ginny repeated, throwing a decorative robe into the trunk with enough force that it caught on a splinter in the wood and tore. With a huff, Ginny Levitated it into the air and threw it with her wand. This time, it sank into the interior of the trunk like a snowball into a field of snow. “To know that my son has Parseltongue because of _you_ , and that his whole life he’ll be speaking the filthy language that Tom Riddle whispered in my ear when I was eleven…”

Harry stirred. “It’s not like I would have wished this for him,” he said, and although he kept his voice quiet, no one could have mistaken the fury in it—least of all Ginny, who knew him so well. She flung herself around to face him. “And it’s not like he’ll be unique. There’ll be lots of kids with Parseltongue now, Gin. Can’t you just—”

“Lots of _Death Eater_ kids. You think I want my son marked that way?” Ginny wiped a hand across her face, knocking loose the tears. “And no, Harry. I tried. That’s why I stayed for a year after he started talking. I thought maybe I could get used to it. But I can’t. Having a son who speaks Parseltongue just brings up my old nightmares of Riddle.”

“The nightmares you never got Mind-Healing for,” Harry snapped. He’d admired Ginny for that after the war, that she seemed so strong she had moved on and put her past trauma behind her. But now she was doing something unforgivable in his eyes. “You’re walking away from being a mother to your _son._ ”

“I told you why!”

“You’re abandoning him!”

“He’s going to have _you_ , isn’t he?” Ginny put her hands on her hips. “Someone who’s not horrified by Parseltongue. Someone who _gave_ it to him. It’ll be better for him not to have me around when I can’t get over my horror. And don’t tell me that you’re over the nightmares, either, Harry! I hear you hissing and twisting in your bed at night!”

“He still needs his mum!” Harry threw up his hands and paced towards the far side of the room. “Merlin, what kind of mother _are_ you?”

“Someone who wants to have children who don’t speak Parseltongue! Someone who’s going to divorce you because it’s clear that you can’t!”

And Harry had spun around and said the unforgivable thing, the thing that made him wince remembering it, and the thing that someday, he would have to explain to James. (It flayed him alive, remembering it at night).

“Fine, then. Go off and hug your precious trauma instead of your child.”

Ginny’s eyes widened, and the tears that had been threatening spilled down her face. Harry slammed to a halt, staring at her. Since her first year, he couldn’t _remember_ seeing her cry like this. She hadn’t even done it when it became clear that James’s first language was Parseltongue and that his English was slow and late in coming.

Shame drenched Harry like a cool shower.

He took a step forwards, reaching out. “Ginny, I’m sorry—I didn’t mean—”

“No, Harry, you did.” She was astonishingly composed, now, but the tears kept on flowing as she looked away from him. “That’s what you think of me. You think I’m _weak_ because my mind and soul were _raped_ when I was eleven, is that it?”

“No, I just.” Harry stopped moving and speaking for a long moment. “James needs his mum.”

“Sometimes,” Ginny said, “a woman needs to heal on her own.”

She picked up the packed trunk and walked towards the Floo. “Expect the divorce papers in the morning,” she added over her shoulder.

And Harry had to stand there and watch her walk away. He knew, even then, knowledge as deep as his bones, that if he had found the right words, or hadn’t meant what he said, she would have stopped and turned around, and James would have had his mum.

But he didn’t know the right words. Which only proved why what he had said was unforgivable.

She did send the divorce papers in the morning. And Harry and James (more to the point) hadn’t seen her in the past two years.

*

“Daddy!”

Harry rolled out of bed in instants. It had been two years since he was a full-time Auror, but he still had the reflexes. He sprinted down the corridor, aiming his wand in front of him and calling up _Lumos_ silently.

James was sitting up in bed, his eyes wide. He didn’t have the usual tears, though. Harry looked around the room decorated in soft blues and greens, wondering if he had cast accidental magic and startled himself awake, instead of with a nightmare.

“Daddy, look.” James pointed a shaky hand at the far wall. Harry turned, his mind filling with visions of enemies breaking into his house to hurt his son.

But instead of a Death Eater or that group of lunatics calling themselves the Order of the Serpent, there was nothing but a small golden snake curled up there. Harry lowered his wand, but kept it out. The snake _still_ could have been sent by an enemy.

“Can you talk to it, James?” Harry was casting a few charms as he spoke, ones that would pick up on the ill intent of the snake if it had been conjured to bite his son. Nothing came back except the charm that clarified the snake _did_ have venom. He studied it in the light. Bright red stripes caught down its golden body, so bright that he was inclined to believe it wasn’t natural, but a magical creature someone had made in Gryffindor colors.

To appeal to his son? If James had been by himself and spoken innocently to the snake, or been attracted to pick it up…

Harry shuddered.

“You talk to it, Daddy.”

Harry sighed and got down on the floor. He hated speaking Parseltongue, especially since it had been one of the things that had cost James his mother. But on the other hand, maybe it was best that he take the lead so James wouldn’t get charmed by the thing and want to keep it as a pet. “ _Where did you come from_?”

The snake snapped her tail straight, a little motion of shock, and then crawled towards him. “ _It was not a lie! Everyone told me the truth!_ ”

Harry placed his wand between them so he could Stun her easily if he had to, and hissed a warning. The snake stopped in place, coiling back and forth, obeying him but obviously resentful about it. Harry sighed. “ _Who is everyone? Where did you come from_?”

“ _I came to seek a speaker, since they are no longer rare. I knew my speaker was in this house._ ” The snake lifted her head, her tongue darting out as she scented. “ _And I was talking about the other snakes. They told me that there was someone here who would Match me, but I did not believe them because I had not smelled the scent for myself._ ”

“ _Match you?”_ Harry echoed warily. That sounded like some sort of mating, and he was not about have a snake lay eggs in their house.

“ _Each snake has a kind of speaker who would Match us. Protect us best, match our temperaments, be able to use the blood magic. What kind of speaker are you, that you do not know this_?”

“ _A reluctant one_ ,” Harry snapped. “ _And I am not going to allow you to Match with my son. He’s far too young for blood magic and the like._ ”

“ _You are mistaken. He is not my speaker. You are._ ”

Harry shut his eyes. He shook his head. “ _I will not Match with you, either. Go back to where you came from._ ”

“ _Why? We are meant to be together._ ”

Harry quelled the hysterical laughter that was trying to well up in him, remembering the time when he would have said the same thing about himself and Ginny. He shook his head again and said, “ _I do not wish any snake as a pet or a companion, and my son is too young for one. There are many other speakers in Britain now. Go find one of them._ ”

The snake glanced around the bedroom. “ _This is a nice large space. I will like it here._ ”

“ _I told you to go home_!”

The snake arranged herself around the foot of one of the bedposts on James’s bed, and yawned soundlessly at him, revealing the delicate fangs that stood out in the front of her mouth. She seemed to have no other teeth. “ _It is strange that you would tell me to leave the place where I already am._ ”

“ _I’m not too young for blood magic, Daddy,_ ” James said, apparently deciding that he could get over his shyness about speaking in front of a snake.

The snake twisted her neck in James’s direction. “ _It is good that the young one also speaks. Perhaps he will bond with one of my eggs one day._ ”

“ _Can I have a snake, Daddy_?”

Harry resisted the temptation to bang his head into a different bedpost than the one the snake was coiled around, because it wouldn’t help. “ _I have no reason to trust a venomous magical snake that an enemy of mine probably conjured around my son._ ”

“ _I am not a conjuration. I have lived in the shadows for most of my life. My kind do. We are so highly magical that people would sacrifice us for potions and blood magic against our will if they knew where we were._ ”

Harry stared at her. “ _What kind of snake are you_?”

“ _You mean you could not tell_?” The snake flicked her neck to the left this time, and revealed that the blood-bright stripes ran all the way across her scales and ended up in a messy knot of color on the back of her head—which at least didn’t have a hood the way a cobra’s did, Harry saw. “ _I am a Gryffindor snake. From us, Godric Gryffindor took his name and his House colors._ ”

“ _Daddy was a Gryffindor_ ,” James chimed in.

“ _That is part of the reason I came to him,_ ” the snake agreed. “ _Someone who was in that House is more likely to be a Match for a Gryffindor snake than someone outside it._ ”

Harry shook his head. “ _I don’t practice the kind of magic that some of the Parselmouths who are announcing themselves now do. You should go and find someone among them._ ” Even as he spoke, he knew there _weren’t_ very many Gryffindor Parselmouths other than him. There had been few Marked Death Eaters in Gryffindor in this last war, and the two Harry survivors was aware of were in prison.

But that wasn’t his problem. The snake would just have to deal with the inconvenience.

“ _There are other kinds of magic we could make together._ ” The snake flicked her tail.

“ _I am uninterested in blood magic._ ”

“ _Still others._ ”

“Can we keep her, Daddy, please?” James clasped his hands and gave Harry the sort of big-eyed look he was terrible at refusing. “She could be your snake, and I could play with her, and I could put a hat on her head.”

Harry had to smile, while the snake, who evidently did understand English, said, “ _You could not._ ”

“I am not going to accept a dangerous _pet_ in this house,” Harry said coolly, glad to return to his _real_ native language now that he knew he could do so. “Not when I know you have venom. Go find someone else.”

“ _No, speaker. I like it here._ ”

Harry shrugged, cast a Netting Charm that he usually used on some of the pixies and fairies who tried to get into the house since it resonated with James’s magic, and carried the snake in the transparent bag that had surrounded her to the window. She hissed at him in agitation, but Harry forced himself to essentially unfocus his hearing and not listen, the way he might prevent himself from reading a book. He’d learned to do it when he was trying to make sure James learned English, too.

The snake appeared extremely upset, but Harry dumped her out the window, then began casting temporary spells that would keep out any reptile from the house in general and James’s room specifically. There was no reason for any reptiles to cross the boundary on an ordinary day, so the spells wouldn’t keep out any creature that had a _legitimate_ reason for visiting them.

“Daddy.”

James sounded as if he was about to cry again. Harry turned from the window and went to sit down next to his son, holding him close and stroking his hair back from his forehead. Sometimes he would just sit there and look at his son, so different from him despite how messy his hair was. No scar, no green eyes, no black hair, no haunted, terrified expression.

And Harry was determined to keep it that way, which was why he was so reluctant to tell James about the unforgivable thing.

Then again, he wasn’t old enough to hear about why his mother had wanted to leave, anyway. Harry kissed James on the forehead, and then tickled him a little until James was giggling and yawning.

As he put James back to bed, James whispered, “Can the snake come and visit tomorrow, Daddy?”

“Maybe,” Harry said, which was a good enough promise with as sleepy as James was. He yawned once more, gave a huge stretch, and went to sleep so fast that Harry could only stare.

Another thing that was different between them, and the only one that Harry envied. He went back to his room and sipped carefully at Dreamless Sleep. He was always careful with it, given how addictive it was.

But he hadn’t had a peaceful night’s sleep without it in nearly a decade now, and he didn’t see that changing any time soon.

*

“Daddy, Daddy!”

Harry looked up from his pile of post. He still received way too much despite having been retired from the Aurors for two years. People wanted his autograph, or thought he would give them a perfect quote about their random product, or wanted to talk about the war, or, in case of the stupid letter in front of him that he was about to tear up, wanted to convince him to enroll James in a “Parselmouth School.”

They were in the drawing room, a large room with a little sunken area in the middle of it that Harry could fill with balls or pillows for James, and had been the reason he’d bought the house. James was hovering a cushion in front of him now.

And he was doing it with _purposeful_ magic, there was no doubt of that, and with the help of gleaming silver snakes that extended from his hand and held the cushion in their mouths for him, instead of Levitating it.

Harry crossed over to his son and crouched on the brick rim of the sunken area. James grinned at him. “I’m doing it, Daddy!”

“Yeah, you are,” Harry agreed, staring at the snakes. They weren’t illusions, but neither were they real creatures. They were conjured ones who had appeared because James wanted to hover the pillow, he was pretty sure. But he needed to ask. “James, how are you doing it?”

“I askded for help, and they came and didded it!” James said. He still had trouble with English words sometimes. He waved his hand around. “ _It’s fun_ ,” he added in Parseltongue.

Harry took a deep breath, ruffled his son’s hair, and went back to the table to stare at the letter. There were several lines about how the Parselmouth School would help Parselmouth children because they instinctively performed magic in a different way than ordinary accidental outbursts.

Harry sighed. He hated Parseltongue, but he wasn’t the one being asked to speak it. And he wanted to do what was best for James. He deserved to be trained even though Harry would never embrace his own Parseltongue.

“So tomorrow,” Harry said aloud, even though James was occupied with his pillow and wouldn’t understand him even if he was, “we have to go talk to that git Malfoy.”


	2. The Wonderful Thing

“ _Father, is there a child coming with the speaking man today?_ ”

“ _There might be._ ” Draco cast a glance at his son, who sat next to the huge terrarium where their snakes slept. “ _Do you want to show Charlie to him_?”

“ _Yes_!” Scorpius reached into the terrarium, towards the small ball of green scales that marked Charlie’s curled, sleeping form.

“ _Don’t disturb him right now, then. You know that he won’t want to show off for guests at all if you irritate him by waking him up._ ”

Scorpius pulled his hand back reluctantly. “ _But I like it when Charlie’s awake._ ”

“ _He’ll be awake later._ Now,” Draco continued in English, since it was important for Scorpius to get practice with both languages, “why don’t you go to your bedroom and have Kala help you dress?”

Scorpius gave a deep sigh, the way he usually did when he was asked to do something that didn’t involve snakes, and trotted off down the corridor that led to his room on the ground floor of the family wing in the Manor. Draco, meanwhile, turned in the chair he had modeled after a Muggle swivel one—a conjured serpent of wood and steel joined the seat to the foot—and stared down at the letter on the table.

He had to admit, he’d sent the letter he had only because he wasn’t about to leave such a prominent Parselmouth out of his community-building project. But he’d never expected Potter to actually respond.

Harry bloody Potter.

It had been almost eight years since Draco had seen him—since the Battle of Hogwarts, in fact. And two years since there was anything more than a fleeting picture in the paper snapped of Potter walking through Diagon Alley. He’d quit his Auror job, quit going into public, quit _life,_ it seemed, when his wife left him and he had to take care of his son.

Draco was still surprised that Potter had got, and retained, sole custody of his son. The Weasleys were too rabid about their children to permit such a thing, normally. But it almost certainly had something to do with the boy’s Parseltongue.

As, in a different way, his divorce from Astoria had. She hadn’t been horrified at all that Scorpius was a Parselmouth or that Draco had developed the trait by the time they wed; she was a little proud, in fact. But what he wanted to do with it…

*

“You’re doing ritual magic.”

“Yes.” Draco glanced at his wife with a frown. They were in Draco’s study, which he had taken over from his father when Lucius had decided that enough was enough and he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life in Britain. Narcissa had been more than happy to “retire” with Father to France. “Is there something wrong with that?”

“You know that ritual magic is how _he_ attained power.”

Astoria never referred to the Dark Lord any other way. She obviously didn’t want to use his title or his real name, but Draco would have liked her to do at least “You-Know-Who.” Sometimes he made embarrassing mistakes based on guesses. He turned in his chair, already a swivel one, to face her. “I know. But I don’t intend to practice the same rituals he did.”

“But you _do_ mean to attain power.”

“Of course I do.” Draco sighed when she stared at him expectantly. “What would you have me do, Astoria? We’ve lost so much of our reputation and our money. We can’t even do good works without someone sneering at us for _daring_ to do it for some ulterior motive. At least I can make sure that Scorpius has access to personal power and fulfillment.”

“You don’t have to do it with ritual magic.”

“I never intend to follow the same path that the Dark Lord did. How many times do I need to tell you that?”

“But you’re a Parselmouth.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

Astoria put her hands on her hips. “You’ll have to do some of the same rituals he did, in order to achieve any level of power in using snake language when you weren’t born with it.”

Draco stared at her. Then he said, in a wonder that felt as if it had hollowed him out, “You don’t trust me.”

Astoria turned away and paced over to the window of the study to stare out of it. Draco didn’t know what she could see—green grass, white peacocks, blossoming trees—that was more fascinating than their argument, and wished she would turn around. But Astoria grew more stubborn when told to do something, so he stayed silent.

“I thought it would be different,” Astoria whispered. “When your parents left for France and you told me that you wanted to have a life out of their shadow. That it would be—quiet. Normal. Who cares what other people think about our charitable contributions? Let’s make the ones we want to make. Let’s do what we want to do. Travel. Take care of Scorpius. Teach him that all people are good.” She was rubbing her hands up and down her arms as if she was cold.

“ _Mistress is cold_?”

Draco sighed and reached down to tickle his fingers against the hood of the young king cobra whom he had called to him not long after his Parselmouth powers began to grow. She had said she was named Edwina, and Draco found too much joy in her companionship to change her name. “ _I don’t know. I think she’s afraid._ ”

“ _Let us find and kill her enemies._ ”

Draco stifled a roll of his eyes, which Edwina had unfortunately learned to interpret. She wanted to kill everyone and everything except family and Parselmouths at all times. She had never understood why that didn’t translate to a larger human scale. When Draco had pointed out that he had many enemies from the war, Edwina had suggested saving her venom for months and then poisoning them in their sleep all at once.

“We’ll do that, of course,” Draco tried to soothe Astoria, although he retained some private doubt about whether teaching their son that _all_ people were good was a good idea. “But I also want to practice the ritual magic and let Scorpius explore the fullest potential of his gift.”

“You say _gift_ as if it wasn’t something passed along from the Dark Mark.”

“It is, but I can’t get rid of it, and I’m not going to teach my son to be ashamed of his potential.”

Astoria’s shoulders slumped for a moment, which made Draco wonder what she had hoped he would say. That it wasn’t potential? That neither he nor Scorpius had any interest in Parseltongue? Well, that would simply be wrong. Scorpius had been babbling in Parseltongue from the time he was nine months old, and it had been one of the best days of Draco’s life when he realized he could understand snakes.

“You want to be politically active, Draco,” Astoria said, and turned around to face him with her hands shaking. “That’s the _exact_ opposite of what I want.”

Draco paused, his fingers smoothing along the back of Edwina’s hood while she hissed sleepy compliments about how good he was at this. “I have no desire to bribe people in the Ministry the way my father did.”

“That’s not what I meant. I mean that you want to change hearts and minds, that you’re going to go out there and _court danger_ instead of—” Astoria looked off to the side. “Instead of staying here and being quiet.”

“I have to change hearts and minds to build the school system for Parselmouths and alter the beliefs about Parseltongue that so many people have, yes,” Draco said dryly. “I have to ask people for money. I have to find the other ones who have Parseltongue and encourage them not to be ashamed. I have to build a ritual circle so that we can practice the most powerful magic together. I’ve been talking about this for _years,_ Astoria, ever since I heard about other people passing Parseltongue to their children and realized what would probably happen when I had a child. Why did you marry me if you disliked it so much?”

“I thought it was just talk.”

Draco flattened his mouth into a straight line and said nothing. Astoria folded her arms.

“So your talk that infuriated my parents about respecting Muggles and Muggleborns,” Draco began.

“I think they should be treated better. But I’m not out there _campaigning_ for it. I want a quiet life.”

She said “campaigning” like it was a dirty word, and even though it was almost a year later before they divorced, Draco knew then that his marriage was over.

*

Now, Draco watched Harry Potter and his son walk towards him across the patterned floor of the great ballroom, and wondered that he had managed to come this far. Astoria would either have laughed or outright refused to believe it.

The years had hardened Potter in a way Draco hadn’t anticipated. He moved with his head up, his hand curled at his side, making no pretense that he wouldn’t go for his wand the instant someone presented a threat to his son. There was a new scar on the side of his face, a ripping red line that ran from the corner of his left eye to his jaw, but Draco had thought it would make him seem more vulnerable. It only made Potter look as if he had survived something that had tried to rip his face off, and that nothing else would faze him, either.

The boy walking at his side, clinging to his leg, had unruly red hair and brilliant brown eyes when he shyly peered around his father at Draco, who stood with Edwina, Scorpius, and Charlie in the middle of the grand blue-and-white ballroom. Draco stifled disappointment he didn’t understand at the fact that the boy didn’t have green eyes. No reason he should inherit them.

“Hi,” the boy, James if Draco remembered correctly, said before Potter could say anything. “Are you that git Malfoy?”

Potter closed his eyes and took a long, slow breath. Draco blinked, and finally said, “My name is Draco Malfoy. This is my son, Scorpius.” He patted Scorpius’s shoulder, and Scorpius stood upright.

“ _Hi_!” he chirped in Parseltongue.

“ _Hi_ ,” James responded at once, and he focused on Charlie as Scorpius held him out. “ _Who is that? What’s his name? You have your own snake, that’s so brilliant! What’s his name_?”

“ _Charlie,_ ” Scorpius said, with the kind of smile that Draco knew meant his son was already planning to be lifelong friends with Potter’s. Someone who admired his snake always had a passport to his good will. “ _Where’s your snake? You could have brought him with you, I wouldn’t have minded._ ”

Charlie lifted his head and flicked his tongue out. Potter made a choked sound, and grabbed James’s hand when James would have run up to pet him. The boy gave his father what Draco thought was a long-suffering look, and said, “ _My daddy doesn’t let me have one. He thinks they’d be dangerous._ ”

“Your son has a bloody _boomslang,_ Malfoy.” Potter’s voice hissed, but not in the good way. He turned his gaze on Draco, and Draco tensed. Edwina, coiled around his shoulders, at once lifted her head and flared her hood. “And you, a cobra, because of course you do. I wouldn’t have answered the letter if I’d known.”

“ _Venomous snakes would never hurt a Parselmouth, Potter,_ ” Draco said, because Potter’s stupid prejudice against snakes as much as his speaking in English was irritating him. “ _Neither would constrictors. And your son will have to have a snake as a companion to participate in the exercises we’re going to be showing him._ ”

“ _Where’s your snake, Mr. Potter?”_ Scorpius added.

James tugged hard against his father’s hand, and Potter walked slowly with him over to Scorpius and Charlie, although Draco saw the way he still tensed when his son reached out to pet Charlie’s head. Charlie, the goofiest boomslang Draco had ever met, snuggled his head into James’s palm. “ _He has one, but he doesn’t let her in the house._ ”

“ _What_?” Draco snapped. “ _It’s a Parselmouth’s duty to care for his snakes, Potter._ ”

Potter turned to face him, hostile magic rising up around him like steam. He ignored Edwina’s hissed warning and the way both children shrank away from him. “There was a snake who wanted to Match with me, or some other absurd name,” he said, voice clipped. “She came into the house without permission and into my son’s bedroom, specifically. I put her outside. I didn’t hurt her, and I didn’t bond with her. She’s not _mine._ ”

“ _A snake came to you and offered herself as your Match, and you refused?”_ Draco looked away from Potter and breathed deeply to calm the swimming black-and-white dots in his vision. “ _Merlin, Potter, you’re an idiot._ ”

“ _She was pretty, too,_ ” James said, from where he was stroking Charlie’s back. Charlie had rolled upside-down with what Draco privately thought of as his idiot expression on his face. “ _All gold with red stripes. She called herself a Gryffindor snake and said she wanted to Match herself with Daddy because there aren’t a lot of Gryffindor Parselmouths. Can your snake do tricks, Scorpius_?”

Draco did his best to drive all his tension down into his body, because right now it was affecting Edwina and she had begun to hiss in agitation. “ _Potter, can I talk to you for a minute_?”

“We’re talking.”

Draco jerked his head violently to the side, and Potter followed him to the right, far enough away from their children that Draco was fairly sure they wouldn’t hear, although Potter did still keep looking over his shoulder. Draco claimed his attention with another sharp jerk of his head. “ _A Gryffindor snake. Do you know how_ rare _they are_?”

“Malfoy—”

“ _Answer me in Parseltongue._ ”

Potter stared at him in silence, and Draco had the impression of a coiled, waiting will that would drive itself over and over again into a trap if that was what it took, in order to get free. Finally, Potter nodded abruptly and said, “ _I don’t like Parseltongue because it came from my parents’ murderer and it destroyed my marriage, Malfoy. I want James to get what he wants. But I’m not going to practice the magic myself, and bonding with a snake is out of the question._ ”

Edwina twisted the upper half of her body around Draco’s left arm and said, _“He sounds like a snake._ ”

Draco stroked her hood to let her know that he’d heard. Yes, Potter’s Parseltongue did sound different from most voices he’d heard, including his own, his son’s, and his father’s. He sounded as if he became an animal when he spoke it. But now wasn’t the time to get into that. “ _It destroyed your marriage?_ ”

“ _Ginny didn’t want to be a mother to children who had Parseltongue. She tried, but it was too much for her._ ”

Draco blinked and started to ask the obvious question, but then held it back. It wasn’t as though it would ever reach Weasley, after all, who was the one who really needed to hear it. “ _Very well. Hold your grudges. But I’m telling you now that those grudges are going to affect your son._ ”

Potter closed his eyes, and a weariness as heavy as his will rose up in his face. “ _I thought I could keep it separate from him._ ”

“ _Not if you refuse to speak the language as though it’s dirty. Not if you encourage him to fear snakes when you ought to know that no snake would ever harm him. Not when you refuse to let him_ have _a snake._ ”

“ _Fine, then we’ll conduct the ritual to call him a snake. I suppose it’s a ritual_?”

Draco nodded, still watching Potter, who hadn’t opened his eyes. “ _And you’ll need to find the snake that wanted to Match with you and apologize to her. She’s an incredible gift. A priceless one._ ”

“ _I told you that bonding with a snake is out of the question,_ ” Potter said, opening his eyes and showing a flash of pure green that made Draco feel uneasy.

“ _You’ll need to be in the circles with your son, and for your sake, you’ll need a snake._ ”

“ _Why should I be in the circles_?”

“ _How else is he going to learn_?”

Potter gave him the strangest look, then seemed to realize that Draco wasn’t going to waste Legilimency on him and ground his teeth. “ _I assumed that you would teach him._ ”

“ _First-generation Parselmouths need their family connection to it. I had to call Scorpius’s snake at the same time he did, because he needs my support. Your son is the perfect age to bond with a snake and learn to use this power, but he’ll need you._ ”

Potter stared off into the distance. “Doesn’t it matter that I won’t be a good Parselmouth?” he whispered. “I can’t give that snake what she wants. I can’t give James what he’ll need, apparently. Isn’t there another way that he can learn from you? That he can call the snake?”

Draco hesitated, then sighed. He still thought Potter was an idiot for rejecting a gift as mighty as this one, but it was true that they’d accomplish nothing with him resisting every step of the way. “ _Fine. We can set up the calling circle with the help of two other Parselmouths. But it’ll mean that you and your son will be in the presence of some people I assumed you would want to avoid._ ”

“It doesn’t matter,” Potter said quietly. “As long as James gets what he needs.”

“And you should know,” Draco said, switching back to English, too, because he wanted to drive home the point, “that training for most Parselmouths and their children is free because I want to get this system off the ground and I want to see them embrace their gifts. That won’t be the case with you. I’m going to charge you all the Galleons I can get away with.”

Potter didn’t flinch. “It doesn’t matter,” he repeated, and then turned around and wandered back towards his son, as if he was unable to help himself.

Draco wrinkled his brow as he stared after him. Edwina leaned her mouth close to Draco’s neck. “ _He stinks of fear. And contempt._ ”

“ _Against us? Because if he does—_ ”

“ _No. He hates himself the way wounded prey that knows it cannot survive hates the world._ ” Edwina flickered her tongue out. “ _He is very silly._ ”

He was, Draco agreed to himself. And he supposed the reasons _why_ Potter hated himself didn’t matter that much. He would pay the money, and his son would receive the education that he needed, and Draco’s Order of Serpents would be more accepted in the future because of his association with the “Savior” and his son.

But Draco, with the curiosity that had driven him deep into Parseltongue and its mysteries, found that he did want to know. And, well, he had uncovered more than anyone else in the last hundred years. Who was to say that he couldn’t learn Potter’s secrets, too, even if Potter tried to keep them buried?


	3. The Calling Circle

“Harry Potter, I think you know Gregory Goyle and Pansy Parkinson.”

Harry nodded, keeping his face quiet and neutral. It was difficult. When he looked at Goyle, he remembered Crabbe burning to death in the Room of Requirement. With Parkinson, he could remember her voice demanding that he be thrown to Voldemort.

But they’d both been kids then—although it _was_ a surprise to Harry that Parkinson had been Marked. Maybe it had happened near the end of the war.

“Hello,” he said, and rested his hand on James’s shoulder as his son tried to hide behind him. He wasn’t used to so many strangers. “This is my son, James Sirius Potter.”

Parkinson examined him, then looked around the large black ritual room in Malfoy’s cellars. (And _that_ had been a treat, too, to come down the stairs and walk past the rooms where Harry and Hermione and Ron and Luna and Dean and Ollivander and Griphook had all been held). “His mother isn’t here?”

Harry shook his head. “Ginny and I divorced a few years ago.” With practice, he kept his voice neutral as well.

Parkinson frowned. “But what about—”

She cut herself off as Malfoy and his son came down the stairs. They were both carrying their snakes, and Harry looked a little off to the side to conceal his own negative reaction. That was when he caught sight of the small krait coiled around Parkinson’s neck and the large python crawling along to catch up to Goyle.

 _Doesn’t anyone have a non-lethal snake?_ Harry thought, but kept silent on that, too. Malfoy had made it _very_ clear that his presence was necessary but only barely tolerated here. These were practicing Parselmouths who wanted to spend their lives immersed in snake magic. He wanted James to be one of them, but Harry never would be. It was only sense that he shut up and let them get on with it.

“We are here,” Malfoy began with a peculiar cadence Harry was instantly certain had something to do with the ritual, “to call a snake for James Sirius Potter. To find his Match if we can; to find a good snake for him to practice magic with if we cannot. He wishes to be a true Parselmouth, to stand among the Order. I chose you as the ones whose magic aligns most closely with mine.” He turned his head, and his eyes seared into Harry’s, even though Harry thought he should have been looking at James. “Harry Potter is here to lend his family magic to the calling circle and make things more familiar for his son.”

“Not to call a Match for himself?” Parkinson asked. Goyle just shifted and grunted.

“Potter has a Match, whom he has rejected.”

Malfoy’s voice could have cut through the black stone that made up the walls and floor of the ritual room, Harry thought. Parkinson gasped. Goyle stared at him as if he didn’t know what to do with that information. Harry folded his arms and glanced away.

“But why would you do something so _stupid_?” Parkinson asked. She didn’t wait for an answer before she turned back to Malfoy. “I don’t know if I can be in a calling circle with him. His stupidity might taint my magic.”

“Potter is here only to provide the familial support for his son, who is still young enough to be overwhelmed.” Malfoy shook his head when Parkinson opened her mouth again. “You remember, Pansy, that I was only the support when we called Charlie for Scorpius.”

“But you had already called your Match. This isn’t the same as working with someone untrained, who can unbalance everything!”

Malfoy hissed a sharp word that streaked past Harry’s ears like a bolt of lightning, and then the ritual room lit. The torches on the walls flickered with uneasy blue-white brilliance, like lightning itself, and the circle on the floor _stirred._

“We shall have a circle that will make sure we are not unbalanced,” Malfoy said simply.

Parkinson and Goyle didn’t answer. They were too busy staring at the circle on the floor, which Harry hadn’t noticed so far because it was so perfectly black and blended in with the stone of the floor. James gasped as the black snake stretched itself, a long ripple that ran up its body and down without making the serpent let go of the tail it was holding with its mouth, and said, “ _Daddy, can we have one like that_?”

It was Parkinson who replied, glancing at them out of the corner of one dark green eye. “ _I’m pleased to see that at least one Potter recognizes the value of the gift._ ”

“ _Daddy does, too!”_ James folded his arms and stomped one foot. “ _He talks to snakes when I ask him! He just doesn’t like it ‘cause that’s why Mummy left._ ”

Harry put a hand on James’s shoulder and just let it rest there. James bit his lip and glanced up at him. “ _Sorry, Daddy_.”

“It’s all right,” Harry said in English, and ignored the cool way Parkinson’s eyes rested on him as he turned to Malfoy. “So what do we need to do?”

*

The calling circle certainly wasn’t a traditional one, Draco had to admit.

He had brought in Greg and Pansy because their magic was of the sort that would balance the circle. Greg, as one of the few Parselmouths who had a constrictor instead of a venomous snake as a Match, would provide the gentle intent of this ritual. Pansy would add the womanly energy that would somewhat substitute for James’s missing mother. Scorpius would be there because he was friendly to James and near the same age. Draco, as leader of the ritual, would do the actual Calling.

And in the meantime, Potter was there as the family and the foundation. Draco directed him to stand on the outside of the circle, behind his son, while Pansy, Greg, Scorpius, and Draco himself, with their snakes behind them, formed the four points inside. James sat in the middle, his eyes shining in a way that made Draco glad Potter had seen the necessity of securing teaching for him. He would be a powerful Parselmouth.

“ _If we’re ready, we can begin_ ,” Draco said, with glances to everyone else.

He got nods from Pansy and Greg and an excited hop from Scorpius, but his son settled down when Charlie lifted his head and put it on Scorpius’s hip. James nodded and clapped, and then settled back himself.

Potter nodded. His magic was quiet and buried so deeply inside him that Draco couldn’t feel it. Draco tried not to frown as he faced the black wall of the ritual room that was the closest to the sunlight outside. He still didn’t know what to make of this strange Potter, who was like a cross between the boy he had known at Hogwarts—

And a man he hadn’t known at all, and couldn’t anticipate.

But for now, Draco closed his eyes and let his magic pour out of him, deep and cool enough to encompass the others like a pool of water. Pansy and Greg responded with tight points of light in return. Greg’s constrictor, Bael, hissed softly along, and Pansy’s Isabella dropped down, sharp and shrill, from the top of the height, magic puddling between them to join Draco’s.

Scorpius and Charlie didn’t provide much more than a contained pool of warmth, but that was all right. Draco smiled at his son, who was doing very well for his first calling circle. Scorpius beamed back.

“Think of calling your snake, James,” Draco whispered. He was the one who would perform that part of the ritual, in truth, but he wanted James to feel involved. And his desire for a snake would shape which kind responded. “You can do it.”

“ _I want a grey one_!”

Draco bit back his amusement, and reached outwards with the flowing force of the magic shifting in a watery circle from him to Edwina to Isabella to Pansy to Greg to Bael to Charlie to Scorpius to James and back again. He felt a mind speak in answer.

And it was probably going to be a venomous snake, although Draco was sure that wasn’t Potter’s preference.

 _Fuck Potter, anyway,_ Draco thought, and opened his eyes as the first call boomed out of him, to see how Potter was taking this.

Potter stood still, his arms at his sides, except that he turned his head a little to follow the flows of magic with his eyes. Draco blinked and nearly dropped the strand that was unfolding in his mind. That was more participation than he’d expected.

And more strength. Why could Potter _see_ the magic? Not even Draco could do that, and he was the most experienced Parselmouth in the circle, since the gift seemed related to the length of time that someone had borne the Dark Mark.

_Potter would be more experienced than me, since he had that bloody scar when he was a baby._

Draco thrust the thought away as the current turned into a waterfall for a moment and Pansy gave him a sharp glance. He knew better than this. He knew that Potter wasn’t important right now. James was.

He turned his gaze back to the basalt walls and raised his mental voice, calling and calling, reaching for the snake that would best complement James Sirius Potter.

*

Harry could _see_ it.

Power like water poured past him, and he found himself tensing his shoulders and shaking his head against it, without meaning to. The flows alternated between blue and black, water in the daytime and water at night, and there was a soft voice that flowed along with them, speaking words now in Parseltongue, now in English, seducing his attention.

Well, it might _want_ his attention, but it couldn’t have it. Harry looked back to the circle and concentrated on keeping his magic flat like a floor to support James’s leaping flame.

James was _laughing_ as the power surged past him. He was stretching out his hands and whisper-hissing, and Harry could almost hear the hissing of the snake that would come for him.

He ignored his own discomfort, the way he was ignoring the surge of power from the circle around them. All of this was weird. All of this wasn’t what he would have chosen for his son. But it was obvious that it had chosen James. So Harry would be the best father to a Parselmouth that he could be, even if he would never be a Parselmouth.

The power paused for a long moment, wavering back and forth, and then it leaped forwards again. Harry assumed it was reaching out in the calling, but then Malfoy gave a hoarse yell, and when Harry spun around to face him, he knew that something had started to go wrong. The cobra on Malfoy’s shoulder had turned a sickly yellow color, and so did the magic that was flowing from him to the others in the circle.

Parkinson shrieked next, her eyes wide, the krait on her shoulder opening its mouth as if to echo her, and then Goyle wobbled in place. Scorpius made a wounded sound, and James—

James _screamed._

Harry reached without even thinking about it, seizing the flow of the magic and bending it to his will. It smashed against him and tried to flood his nerves with pain. Harry laughed at it with the silent scorn of someone who had faced the Cruciatus from Voldemort himself, and bore down on it.

In seconds, he saw the way it should go. It had been pouring in a smooth circle, with Malfoy as the beginning and end of the ring. Harry caught his eyes, which were blown wide with what might be pain or surprise, and tossed the cord of magic to him.

Malfoy fumbled for a second, then caught it. The yellow glow around his cobra faded. James stopped screaming, and something in Harry that had wanted to kill people until his son was all right relaxed.

The power bucked harder now, no longer painful but restless. Harry ignored that, too, and looped the others carefully back into it, the humans along with their snakes. Parkinson and her krait came back into it, and Goyle and his constrictor. For long moments, Scorpius and his boomslang remained outside it, but Harry smiled at him encouragingly, and finally the little boy smiled back and began to resonate with the power again.

James joined in with a pure note of song that made the circle quiver, and then a snake crawled into being over the edges of the physical circle on the floor, between one of its ripples and the next.

Harry gritted his teeth, but remained part of the circle, a conduit for it, and the snake came into the light.

It was a blue-grey color that Harry could have admitted was lovely if he was ever going to admit anything like that, interrupted by black bands. When it lifted its head, Harry could see that the head and belly were a soft yellow color. Its tail had an odd shape to it, but Harry couldn’t fully glimpse it from where he was standing.

Malfoy hissed in Parseltongue, “ _A banded sea krait._ ”

Harry twitched, but again restrained the temptation to throw everything up in the air, dart into the circle, grab James, and run away. But perhaps some of his curiosity came through, because Malfoy glanced towards him.

“ _Banded sea kraits can move on land, unlike some of their kin._ ” Malfoy gave him a harsh smile. “ _Venomous, of course._ ”

Harry just nodded. By now, he had given up on hoping that a non-dangerous snake would choose James. Although it would have been nice to have a little grass snake or something like that.

Malfoy had a strange tone in his voice when he spoke, too, but Harry managed to ignore that. Maybe he was just surprised that Harry had let the calling circle proceed instead of trying to wreck it.

James picked up the snake and cradled it in his hands, then announced, “ _I love him, Daddy._ ”

Harry nodded and smiled and waved a hand at James. Speaking in English would disrupt the ritual—Malfoy had made that clear before they started—and fuck everything if he was going to speak in Parseltongue.

“ _You will need to keep him in water most of the time,_ ” Malfoy continued, his voice curling and seeming to ride the circle of power that went flowing past Harry rather than echoing from his mouth. “ _You should enchant a small container of water that can float beside you when you want to carry him with you._ ”

“ _I don’t have a wand,_ ” said James anxiously, and turned to stare at Harry.

Harry would have challenged Voldemort’s heart not to melt at the look in his son’s eyes. He took a deep breath and spoke, “ _Yes, of course, I’ll enchant the water so that you can carry him with you. Have you thought about a name_?”

“ _I want to call him Scorpius._ ”

Scorpius Malfoy laughed, sounding more surprised than anything. Malfoy raised his eyebrows, but then smiled. “ _Having more than one being in a circle called by the same name might be disruptive to the magic. Please choose something else._ ”

James pouted and sighed, but Malfoy obviously wasn’t going to be moved. He looked down at the snake in his hands. “ _What are blue things_?”

“ _The sky,_ ” said Scorpius.

“ _The ocean_ ,” Parkinson offered. “ _Which would be appropriate since he’s a sea krait._ ”

“ _Sapphires,_ ” said Malfoy.

James nodded. “ _I like that sound. His name is Sapphire._ ”

It could have been worse, Harry reflected. In fact, everything could have been a great deal worse, if the ritual going wrong had affected the calling of James’s snake. At least this way, if something was off, Harry couldn’t tell what it was, and he didn’t think Malfoy and the rest would have been so contented if something was.

The ritual ended with Malfoy softly chanting phrases that made the ripples fade and disappear, and the black snake on the floor went back to looking as if it was made of stone. Harry let the magic go with a relieved sigh. Carrying it around had been like carrying boulders with knives on the bottom that were planted in his shoulders.

Parkinson gave him a sharp glance before she left, and Goyle might have done the same thing if he was capable of it. Harry stretched his arms and waited until Malfoy escorted James out of the circle. Scorpius immediately bounced up to James and started chattering away, comparing their snakes.

Harry conjured an enchanted glass container of water, and let James place Sapphire in it. Then he turned as someone tapped him on the shoulder.

“We need to talk,” Malfoy said.

 _At least he said it in English,_ Harry thought. He nodded, though. He had probably screwed up the ritual in some way that wasn’t visible, although as long as it didn’t harm James, he wasn’t sure he cared. “All right. Let me get James settled somewhere and—”

“The boys can go to the nursery. _Scorpius, take James to the nursery._ ”

Scorpius looked a little startled, but he trotted off to do that. James was so involved in watching Sapphire and asking him questions that he didn’t appear to have noticed. Sapphire answered in a soft voice that made Harry obscurely glad James didn’t appear to have attracted an arrogant snake.

He turned to Malfoy, and waited for his assessment of whatever he had done wrong.

But Malfoy said, “Do you know what you _did_?”

Harry blinked. “Interfered. Sorry. I didn’t think the ritual would succeed without it.”

Malfoy leaned towards him. “You handled that power like a Parselmouth who has a Match. And _this_.” He did something that felt like he was pushing a small wave of magic at Harry.

Harry let it wash over him. “This, what?”

“Your magic resonates with mine.” Malfoy smiled without using his eyes. “Potter, you _must_ embrace your Parseltongue. Your snake, wherever she is. Do you understand how powerfully we can cast together if you do this?”

He sounded reverent. Harry stared directly into his eyes. “I’m grateful for what you did for James. And I’ll never keep him away from Parseltongue, or speak badly in front of him about it, or try to separate him from Sapphire. But the rest…”

“Yes?” Malfoy sounded breathless.

“Go to hell,” Harry said pleasantly, and walked out of the ritual room.


	4. The Circle of Thought

“I—didn’t know if you wanted to know that Ginny is getting married again. But it’ll be in the papers, so…”

Harry smiled at Hermione. Honestly, he loved his friends, but they went out of the way to protect him too much. Harry was more than capable of doing that for himself, and James, too. “It’s all right, Hermione. Life goes on. And we didn’t end things on good terms. She’s got a right to live.” He settled back against the huge wingback chair in Hermione’s drawing room with his mug of cider and subtly checked the charm glowing on the pocket watch that Molly had given him all those years ago. Yes, James was all right at the Burrow. “Who’s she getting married to?”

“Seamus.”

“Really? Huh. I thought he’d settled down with that French witch a while ago.”

Hermione relaxed so much she practically collapsed onto the Gryffindor-red couch in front of the fireplace. Harry shook his head fondly at her. Yes, it took a lot of self-control and practice, but he _could_ restrain his temper.

“He had, but then they broke up when she wanted him to move to France, and Ginny met him when he went to a Holyhead Harpies game.”

Harry nodded. Ginny had rejoined the team after they got divorced, and she was succeeding brilliantly, from the little news that he’d heard. “Well, good for her. Is there some other reason you didn’t want to tell me?” he added, because he knew Hermione, and her face was too red now.

“Um.” Hermione spent so much time staring at the tattered thread hanging from one of her ink-splattered sleeves that Harry took pity on her.

“She’s pregnant, isn’t she?”

Hermione snapped her head up. “What? Did someone tell you? Did you write to her?” Ron and Hermione appeared incapable of understanding that Harry had resigned himself to the end of his marriage, and had thought he was writing to Ginny every day or something.

“No, I just guessed what would put that expression on your face.” Harry sighed when Hermione looked as unhappy as she had the last time she heard about a mistreated house-elf. “Listen, Hermione, the main thing I hope is that the pregnancy goes well and the baby and Ginny are healthy and that someday James can have a good relationship with his half-sibling. That’s all.”

“Mate!”

Ron had just come in through the door and was shedding his Auror robes. Harry leaned back to smile at him. “Hey. Have a good day chasing down villainous Dark wizards?”

Ron laughed. “The best. We caught a dragon egg smuggler, and then it turned out she was linked to several unicorn deaths…”

He kept up the flow of talk until Hermione pointed out, rather tartly, that Ron’s hair was dripping a substance that could only loosely be described by the word “mud,” and that he should go up and shower. Ron grinned and started up the stairs, but then pivoted around and stared hard at Harry. “You staying for dinner, mate?”

“Yes.”

“ _Good_ ,” Ron said, and retreated backwards up the stairs, keeping a firm eye on Harry, as if he expected him to explode. The news about Ginny, Harry supposed.

Hermione sighed when Ron was out of sight. “He wants to discuss the Parselmouth school that you’re enrolling James in with you.”

Harry tensed despite himself, and noticed Hermione noticing it. He exhaled hard and looked in the other direction. “I appreciate his concern, but _I’m_ the one with the right to make decisions about my son,” he said. “Since Ginny’s—not here.” He’d wanted to say “gave up all responsibility,” but that wouldn’t be fair.

“I know that you have the right to make that decision, Harry. Just—is it right for him to grow up with the children of Death Eaters?”

“He needs to know things about his Parseltongue, things I can’t teach him. And right now, he doesn’t have a lot of other friends like his cousins because of the continual delicate dance we have to do around the Burrow to make sure that we’re not there when Ginny is.”

Hermione winced. “You know that Molly wouldn’t—”

“Yes, but Ginny would,” Harry said, and that ended the conversation, as far as he was concerned. He would listen during dinner when Ron and Hermione talked to him again about the Parselmouth school, but his mind was made up. James adored being around Scorpius, he adored learning how to care for Sapphire, and from what Harry had seen when he toured the school, the teachers were doing a surprisingly good job.

*

“Oh, Mr. Malfoy! You startled me.”

Draco gave his best charming smile to the witch in charge of the Ministry Archives. “I’m sorry, Miss…”

“Clarissa.”

He had been asking for her last name, but Draco preserved his smile, and simply nodded. “Of course. Well, Clarissa—” she giggled “—I’m here to see about some of the old editions of the _Daily Prophet._ ” He cast a helpless glance around at the maze of sapphire-colored shelving and the random cubbyholes and nooks that were as likely to hold ancient scrolls as rolled-up newspapers. “I don’t know where to start.”

“Well, you’re in the wrong part of the Archives for that, first of all, Mr. Malfoy! Come with me, and we’ll make sure that you’re set on the right path.”

Draco preserved his smile as he followed her down several aisles, but he was thinking, _An interesting choice of words._

When they reached a section of the Archives that did smell like newsprint, Clarissa turned to face him and gave him a brilliant smile, twirling a curl of ginger hair around one finger. Too bad she didn’t know that ginger hair did nothing for Draco. “Now, to find a certain edition of the paper, you just say the date and swing your wand like this—” she traced a P-shape in the air “—and it’ll come to you. To return it to its place, recite date backwards, and trace this.” She made an R-shape with her wand this time.

“And to see all the editions for a particular month?”

“Oh, the same, except you’ll say the name of the month to retrieve them, and reverse them by saying the year first.”

“Thank you, Clarissa. You’ve been enormously helpful.”

Despite her obvious desire to linger, in the end, Clarissa had to sigh and retreat. Draco ignored the way that she was obviously attempting to draw his attention to her bum, and focused on the shelves in front of him.

“April 2005. May 2005.”

Dust shook into the air as the papers hurtled towards them. Draco stepped neatly aside and let them stack themselves on the only table in this section of the Archives, which had a chair in front of it. When the flights had stopped, he sat down and sorted through them slowly.

He hadn’t remembered the exact weeks or days, only the months, but in the end, that didn’t matter, because the _Prophet_ always put everything relating to Potter on the front page, so Draco had only to glance and move on if a particular edition didn’t have anything.

And sure enough, there it was, beginning the third week of April. A picture of Potter flinching and trying to duck out of sight in an obscure corner of Diagon Alley, while the headline blared, _MIND-HEALER TO HARRY POTTER TELLS ALL!_

Draco skimmed quickly through the article, then nodded and flipped to another. Few had much to add to the original, but they repeated the details enough for Draco to build a coherent picture of something he’d barely thought about for years.

Potter had gone to a Mind-Healer called Leroy Bandler after, apparently, some kind of traumatic incident had happened to him on an Auror mission. Bandler had listened to Potter for three months, then sold the secrets Potter had told him to the papers. Bandler’s excuse, as listed in one article that included a photograph of him standing with his arms around his wife and children, was that his children were starving and he needed the money, and he believed Potter “a danger to our society.”

Draco, who knew very well what Mind-Healers were paid, snorted to himself.

The articles were filled with details about Potter casting the Unforgivables during the war, his childhood with the Muggles where apparently his cousin had chased him and bullied him and his aunt and uncle had called him a freak, his Parseltongue, and his confrontation with the basilisk at the end of his second year in school. Bandler said gravely that “Parselmouths are dangerous” and that he “wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out that Potter is an unwitting weapon of You-Know-Who.”

That had been the same year that details started out to come out about those who had been branded by the Dark Lord developing as Parselmouths, so outrage over that part of the story had died down fairly quickly. There were simply too many purebloods with money and good positions in society speaking Parseltongue for the prejudice to endure.

And Draco hadn’t paid attention to the articles about Potter since then. He’d immersed himself fully in the campaign to make Parselmouths more acceptable.

Now…

_Shit. The perfect combination of circumstances to encourage him to distrust his gift. The prejudice against it when we were in school and he was the only publicly-known Parselmouth other than the Dark Lord, the trauma surrounding it, the betrayal by a Mind-Healer, the connection with the Dark Lord killing his parents, and now his wife leaving him._

Draco didn’t like to admit it, but he supposed, in a way, that everyone involved was lucky Potter had sought training for his son at all, instead of trying to suppress James’s Parseltongue.

Draco returned the papers to their place in the shelves and headed thoughtfully towards the entrance. Clarissa giggled and fluttered at him. Draco nodded to her and kept going, mind turning towards the next planned class where he, Scorpius, James, and Potter would all be present, two days from now.

Well, technically, Potter wouldn’t be there until _after_ the class, when he would come to retrieve James, but that didn’t matter much. Draco still had to speak to him.

*

“A moment of your time, Potter.”

Harry felt the wariness trying to stiffen all his muscles, but he only nodded and turned to James. “Why don’t you and Sapphire play with Scorpius and Charlie for a little while?” he suggested.

“ _Okay, Daddy,_ ” James hissed happily, and trotted over to the other side of the broad classroom space, which was done in calming greens and blues. Harry wasn’t blind to the fact that the large space had a ritual circle sketched around it, but he did trust Malfoy when he said that no Parselmouth would be doing rituals this young.

Harry turned to Malfoy. The man was studying him thoughtfully, his cobra curled around his throat but silent. Harry shrugged to himself and asked, “Did James get in trouble in class today? He’s not good at sitting still for long periods of time, I’m afraid.”

“No. I wanted to let you know that I went to the Ministry Archives and sorted through the _Daily Prophet_ articles covering the time of your—dispute with Healer Bandler.”

Harry bit back the stream of curses he wanted to unleash. Losing his temper was the cause of most of his past woes, at least the ones that Voldemort wasn’t directly responsible for. He’d lost his marriage with Ginny because of it, and he wouldn’t have driven Bandler to reveal all those facts about his past if Harry hadn’t screamed at the man for calling him a Dark wizard.

And, well, the _Prophet_ was publicly available. Harry couldn’t be angry at someone for looking at it.

“I see.”

“I understand now why you want nothing to do with your Parseltongue.” Malfoy was scrutinizing him in a way that reminded Harry absurdly of Hermione. “And I wanted to let you know that if you became part of my Order, I would never betray your secrets like that.”

“The option isn’t on the table, so I’m not worried about that.”

Malfoy paused for a long moment. Harry looked longingly over his shoulder, almost wishing that James would have the kind of tantrum that he did when he went too long without a nap, but he was happily hissing away with Scorpius and their snakes.

“Have you been to another Mind-Healer since?”

Harry laughed, and then stopped when he saw how James had twisted around to stare at him. He tried not to bring the ugly, violent side of himself around his son. He faced Malfoy and shook his head. “And give them the chance to betray me _again_? Of course not.”

“I don’t understand why Bandler wasn’t punished for his misconduct.”

“Because I’m an evil Dark wizard, Malfoy, haven’t you heard? Going after him would have made me look _more_ evil, and anyway, I’m a celebrity. The unhinged famous person persecuting the poor helpless little man who only did it because his children were _starving._ ”

“They weren’t starving. He bought one of them a new racing broom with that money.”

“I know, Malfoy.” Merlin, Harry was so tired. He raked his hand through his hair and saw Malfoy focus on his scar for a moment, but Harry ignored that. “When I found out what he’d done, I did go to St. Mungo’s. But I came in with my magic storming, and—”

“What?”

Harry grimaced. _Shit._ He’d only ever used that term in his own head, and to bloody Bandler. “My magic out and playing around me. There was—lightning. Thunder. Serpents made of black light crawling next to me. It scared everyone out of their wits. Of course, after that they were perfectly willing to believe Bandler when he decreed that I was evil.”

Malfoy stared at him with his mouth slightly open. Harry ignored that, too. He would put up with a lot to have a competent teacher for James’s Parseltongue, and amazingly, it did seem that Malfoy was that. Of course, that might only be because his passion for making Parselmouths strong and achieving power through rituals had overruled his blood prejudice, but Harry would take it.

“I’ve never heard of the serpents made of light as an effect of Parselmouth magic.”

Harry relaxed a little. Yes, Malfoy’s fixation on power was annoying, but it really did defend him and James. “No one else had, either. Like I said, though, it became much easier to claim that I was Dark after that. Voldemort returned. Unhinged. Dangerous. All of that.”

Malfoy gave a shivering flinch and then ignored Voldemort’s name. “But you aren’t.”

“Try convincing the people who were willing to believe I was the Heir of Slytherin and a cheater in the Tri-Wizard Tournament and an insane liar of that.”

Malfoy was quiet, his eyebrows still bent as if he was trying to think of some way to make Harry’s words not be true. The cobra around his neck woke up and aimed her snout at Harry. Harry let his hands rest by his sides, where he could get to his wand and snap up a shield in seconds if he needed it.

“ _He is telling the truth_ ,” the cobra said.

Harry sneered a little. “Need to rely on your snake to tell you that, Malfoy? When you went to the trouble of looking up all the details in the papers?”

Malfoy stroked the cobra’s back, once, a light touch of two fingers as if he did it every day. “ _Hush, Edwina._ ” He was considering Harry, his eyes traveling up and down. “ _I did not think he was lying._ ”

Harry sighed. “Is there a point to this interrogation? I should get James home.”

“I’d like to help you move forwards.”

Harry took a long step deliberately nearer Malfoy. “I don’t think I need your help.”

Malfoy’s shoulders tightened, but he kept meeting Harry’s eyes. “I mean, I’d like to help you become more comfortable with your Parseltongue and your Match.”

“No. Next question.”

“Have you considered that sooner or later, your attitude _will_ affect your son? He’s already asked me why you insist on speaking English with him so often and why you don’t like to look straight at Sapphire.”

“Then I’ll work on becoming more comfortable with that. But part of the answer is just that parents and children _don’t_ have to be exactly the same, and that’s what I‘ll tell him if he asks me.”

“Bold of you to assume he would be comfortable enough to ask in the first place.”

Harry rolled his eyes because he couldn’t _help_ himself. “And if you actually cared, Malfoy, then maybe I would listen to you. But you don’t.”

“I care! I want every Parselmouth to be—”

“You want me to embrace my Parseltongue so that you can have someone powerful to add to your Order and your ritual circle. No. You can live without me, and I can live without you.”

Harry turned and began to walk away, but Malfoy called after him, “Haven’t you considered that your experiences with Parseltongue aren’t any more traumatic than mine are? I was Marked by _him_. I had to let Death Eaters into the school and try to assassinate Dumbledore under pressure that he would otherwise kill my family. I had to—”

Harry glanced over his shoulder, and whatever was in his eyes made Malfoy falter and fall silent, and Malfoy’s cobra rear up and hiss.

“Yeah,” Harry said. “And my parents were murdered by a Parselmouth. Because of that, I had to spend ten years with Muggles that the whole wizarding world knows now were abusive, I had to kill a giant basilisk in our second year and a man possessed by Voldemort in our first, I had to put up with opinion swinging back and forth on me constantly and people thinking I was mad and evil and dangerous, my godfather was innocent and then I lost him, I was used as a _tool_ in Voldemort’s resurrection ritual, I spent a year with the Ministry trying to crush me and carving words into my hand with a Blood Quill, I spent another year hunting down ways to destroy Voldemort and in the end walked to my _death_. And then my Mind-Healer betrayed me and my wife divorced me.” He bared his teeth. “Don’t talk to me about how much harder you have it, Malfoy. You want to have a trauma competition? I’ll win.”

Malfoy was silent as Harry went to collect James and Sapphire. He renewed the water charm around the sea krait and nodded absently to James as he chattered, in a mixture of Parseltongue and English, about all the history and magic he had learned in class that day.

Yes, Harry knew he had trauma. But when everyone would side with the Healer if one betrayed him again, and people still flinched away from him in the streets when he went to the shops in Diagon Alley or Hogsmeade, Harry didn’t see what he could do about it.

_This is just the way things are._

And then Harry forced himself to snap out of his thoughts, and pay attention to his son, who was more important than he was.


	5. Parselmouth Problems

“Hello, Potter.”

 _Oh, great._ Pansy Parkinson had fallen into step beside him as he walked through Diagon Alley to go to the shops. Harry bit back the urge to curse, and nodded distantly to her. “Parkinson. How are you?”

“Well enough.” She eyed him sharply, and then the basket that hovered behind him. “Did you know that you could conjure a sturdier basket that would be attached to you with a snake?”

“I didn’t know that. Thank you for telling me. This basket serves me well enough.”

Harry thought she might leave once she understood that she wouldn’t get anything but clipped responses out of him, but instead, her smile tilted towards amused. “I just wanted you to know. Especially since your basket can be stolen, hovering behind you like that, and you wouldn’t know until long after it was gone. Whereas the snake basket won’t be stolen because—”

“Everyone would be too afraid to touch it?”

Harry had snapped harder than he meant to, but Parkinson only laughed as if he’d said something witty. “Exactly.” She eyed him for a second, and then the shutters seemed to fall open behind her eyes. “Listen, Potter, you’re a Parselmouth, like the rest of us. I’m only trying to help you.”

“Harry _Potter_?”

Harry tensed his shoulders and turned to face the blustery voice. This was one reason he never went to the shops with James, who was safely at school for the morning. Parkinson halted beside him, but didn’t move away.

Well, fine. That would just mean she had a front-row seat to laugh from. She only taught at the school one day a week, so Harry didn’t have to worry too much about her negative opinion of him affecting James.

The blond man who was staring at him looked vaguely familiar, but then, as Hermione would say, that was down to inbreeding in the British wizarding population. He shook his head and stepped backwards hastily, and then pointed one finger at Harry.

“I don’t want you to go after my family, Dark wizard.”

“I won’t,” Harry began, but the man just bellowed on.

“I want you to know that I’m a _normal_ human being, not like you, with the Parseltongue and the filthy Muggle home you hailed from and all the rest of it!”

Parkinson caught her breath beside him. Harry knew it was the prelude to laughter, but he just fixed his eyes on the ground and shrugged, then turned and brushed past Parkinson as he aimed at the next shop. He was a good judge of these encounters by now, and he knew the man was a talker, but wouldn’t try to follow or hex him.

“You’re an idiot.”

Harry winced a little, but nodded. “I know.”

“Not you. _Him_!” The blond wizard leaned back as Parkinson pointed at him, as if he believed that she would launch lightning out of her finger. Given the average wizard’s notions of defense, Harry supposed that he couldn’t really blame the git.

“What? How dare you—”

“And that just proves that you’re more of an idiot, that you use that kind of cliched dialogue.” Parkinson stalked a step forwards, and abruptly her krait was visible around her throat. It had probably been under a specialized Disillusionment Charm before, Harry thought, and noticed the way the man paled when he saw the snake. “ _Isabella, I think we should teach him a lesson._ ”

“ _Yes, we should_ ,” the krait agreed, and raised her head to focus on the man, hissing loudly. They were drawing a crowd, and Harry glared at Parkinson, wondering what in the world she was thinking. This would hardly help better the reputation of Parselmouths, the way Malfoy was always harping about them needing to do.

“I-if you c-curse me, th-then you’ll be in trouble—”

“Oh, really? When it’s simply a curse to increase your virtue?” Parkinson smiled at him and twitched her fingers, a cue that the snake apparently picked up. Isabella wove her neck into a complicated knot, which Harry realized, abruptly, resembled a rune. Parkinson touched it with her left hand and flung her right hand at Harry’s interrogator.

Harry tried to leap forwards, but he was standing too far away, and behind Parkinson besides. The curse hit the man, and he shut his eyes and shouted, then started patting himself all over, as if he thought he was going to find another limb or head.

“Oh, please,” Parkinson said, her voice heavy with contempt. “As if I would tax my dear Isabella by using a Transfiguration on you.”

 _Are Parselmouths not good at Transfiguration?_ Harry made a mental note to himself. It might mean James would need some extra training before he went to Hogwarts. He wondered if he should ask Minerva McGonagall about that. Harry couldn’t say that he had that expertise in Transfiguration, either.

“Wh-what did you do, then?” The man had his courage back, from the way he glared at Parkinson with folded arms.

“I ensured that whenever you go around spreading ugly rumors and lies you don’t even believe in yourself, that you’ll be subject to a phantom snakebite,” Parkinson said, and laughed at the expression on the man’s face. Harry wished he could. The coldness surging through him prevented it. “Don’t worry, it won’t poison you. It’ll simply hurt, until you retract the lie.”

“I do believe that Potter is a Dark Lord rising!”

The next instant, the man let out a loud yelp and slapped his hand to his side, over his ribs. Parkinson nodded in what looked like peaceful amusement, her mouth curving. “That’s what it would feel like to have Isabella nip you. Now apologize.”

“No!”

This time, the yelp was more like a scream, and the man tried to keep a hand clapped over his ribs while bending down to grab his foot. Harry, his face burning, grabbed Parkinson’s arm. “Stop,” he hissed into her ear. “Take it off.”

“Why should I? He disgraces not just you but all Parselmouths with that kind of bollocks.”

People who had gathered around to watch the scene gasped at her words, and a few people herded their children away. Harry closed his eyes as sharp misery hit him like a blade. Their eyes… “Please, Parkinson.”

Parkinson said nothing, but her hand fell on his arm, and she steered him away. Behind them, the man gave a low moan.

“You didn’t remove it.”

“Of course not. That’s the least he deserves for what he said about you.”

Harry dragged his hand across his face and decided to put it in terms that Parkinson could understand, since obviously speaking about the harm to innocents wouldn’t move her. “Has it occurred to you that I still have to do my _shopping_ here? People are going to hate me even more now, and gossip about me, and—”

“Potter.”

Harry glanced up and found Parkinson facing him, heedless of the gaping observers still passing them. Her hands had taken both of his, and she was staring into his face with a direct, human stare he hadn’t known she was capable of. He tried, embarrassed, to take his hands away, but she held on to them. Isabella had disappeared behind what was probably another Disillusionment Charm.

“They say those things about you _anyway_ ,” Parkinson said. “That man approached you when you hadn’t said a word to him, hadn’t even bumped into him. Don’t you deserve some peace from that? Doesn’t _James_ deserve some peace from that?”

Harry eyed her. “You’re using my son against me.”

“Yes,” Parkinson agreed without a trace of shame. “He’s a nice boy. I like him. And he can’t grow up in the kind of isolated bubble you think you can preserve around you. He’s going to hear things like that. Unless you act to stop it.”

Harry thought of how to phrase it, turning it around in his head, and finally said, “They have a right to say it.”

“They do _not_ ,” Parkinson snapped. “Why would they?”

“Because I do lose my temper,” Harry said. “And I am a Parselmouth. And they associate that with Voldemort.”

Parkinson flinched a little, but didn’t back away at the name. “So what? They should associate it with other people more by now. They ought to see Parseltongue as the trait of a savior, considering what you did for Britain.”

Harry arched an eyebrow, remembering a frantic young woman who had advocated for throwing him to Voldemort. “Fancy _you_ saying that, Parkinson.”

Parkinson shook her head a little. “The difference between me and them is that I can admit I fucked up,” she said, and ignored the glare she got from a witch walking by with two young children. “And that I’m fighting to make a world that’s different from what we grew up with, not just settling back and trusting that it’ll change on its own.”

“What you think I’m doing, I suppose.”

“No, Potter,” Parkinson said, and her hands tightened once more before she let him go. “What they’re doing.”

Harry had to turn his head and stare in the other direction, at one of the small courtyards with food stalls where he went to buy vegetables. He shuddered and shook his head and finally murmured, “Well. Anyway. I need to be getting on.”

“I came here because someone wanted to meet you.”

Harry turned back, wary. If Parkinson had children, he hadn’t met them yet. Then again, why should he have? He was only a Parselmouth who had once been an enemy, and who hadn’t yet agreed to become part of the ritual circle or the school or the whole _system_ they had going on. It was the best place for James, he would definitely agree on that, but it would never be the right place for him.

Parkinson seemed to be fumbling in her bag. Harry watched, his heart rate accelerating, ready to leap away if this turned out to be some kind of ambush. It was, but not the kind he’d thought.

“Here we are!” Parkinson finally said in a bright tone, and held out what looked like a clump of yellow yarn.

Then it unfolded into the Gryffindor snake that Harry had seen in James’s room. She shot her tongue towards him, and wriggled her whole body like a puppy begging for a treat. “ _Speaker! My speaker_!”

“She came searching for me because she could trace that you’d recently been in magical contact with me,” Parkinson said calmly, her hand still extended. “Not one snake in a hundred could do that, Potter. She belongs with you, and you with her.”

Harry looked her, rather than the snake, in the eye. “No.”

“Why _not_?”

“ _He is stubborn._ ”

“My Parseltongue has caused enough damage,” Harry said, and then regretted it when he saw how Parkinson recoiled. He shut his eyes and tried out the breathing exercises he’d looked up for himself after he learned that going to Mind-Healers was futile. He breathed a few times to the count of ten, and then said, “I don’t want to pursue the magic the way that you and Malfoy and the rest do.”

“There are things a Parselmouth can do other than ritual magic,” Parkinson said quietly. “But I would have thought that you’d want to defend the reputation of the people that your son is growing up among, if not your own.”

“ _I can help you_ ,” the Gryffindor snake announced. “ _My name is Sela. Since you were so rude as not to ask before._ ”

It was a variation of the Parseltongue word for “light.” Harry looked at her again and saw her neck stretched yearningly towards him.

Snakes could yearn for the companionship of humans. He was sure of that, after seeing Malfoy’s circle. What was wrong was that she was yearning for _his_ , when he couldn’t offer her anything.

Harry shook his head. “I’m glad that you seem to be benevolent,” he said. “But I don’t want to bond with a snake.”

“You have no idea what you’re rejecting,” Parkinson said, her eyes hard. “Not just the ability to participate in ritual circles like the one we did the other day—”

“I participated without one.”

“Or the ability to cast spells like the one I used on that idiot—”

“I find that I can use the right spells when I need them.”

“But the ability to bond with your son.”

Harry paused. Parkinson gave him a superior look that he tried to ignore. Sela continued reaching for him, twining along Parkinson’s arm to the furthest reach of her hand and leaning out. Harry tried to ignore the imploring way she looked at him. Snakes didn’t _really_ get expressions on their faces like humans did. He had to ignore the temptation to say that they did, because it would only serve to blind him to reality in the end.

The reality being that he was already scarred and scarring and _old._ Bonding more closely with his son sounded tempting, but how did he know that he wouldn’t hurt James, too?

“ _You are very stubborn_ ,” Sela announced. “ _That is all right. I am more stubborn._ ”

Harry just shook his head and looked at Parkinson. “I appreciate you bringing her here, but I won’t bond with her.”

He thought Parkinson would drop her arm and leave in disgust. He was good at making people do that. But Parkinson only marched closer, so that Sela’s head was only a few centimeters from Harry’s elbow. She still couldn’t cross the distance, though. Or, presumably, they wanted him to do a bit of symbolic reaching-out.

“I’ll tell you something else that not even Draco knows,” Parkinson said. “I was in that ritual circle, and I know that you shouldn’t have been able to pick up the current of power like you did. Not when Draco started it.”

“It hurt, but I managed—”

“It means that you and Draco have magic much closer to each other than most Parselmouths do. I don’t think he’s realized it yet. He’s probably still thinking about other things than the ritual, like the daily business of the school. Just like some Parselmouths Match with snakes and others bond with them, some Parselmouths Match with each other. We’re seeing that now that we’re asking Parselmouths in countries where they were never so scorned.”

Harry closed his eyes wearily. He wondered what Parkinson would say if he told her about what he’d said to Ginny. Would she still be so happy _then_ to try and get him on the side of the snakes?

No, probably not. But Harry was cowardly enough that he didn’t want to repeat it. It was going to be hard enough to explain it to James when he was old enough to understand it.

“ _You smell like pain._ ”

Harry’s eyes flew open. He _hated_ it when someone revealed that he was vulnerable like that. And luckily enough, the people on the street couldn’t understand Sela, but Parkinson certainly could.

“ _That’s the way I usually smell_ ,” he told her shortly, and glanced around. Yes, he was still getting sharp looks. No one had decided to drift over and stare pointedly at him for being a Dark wizard out in public yet, but that was almost certainly coming soon.

“Give me the damn snake,” he told Parkinson.

Sela was already unwinding from Parkinson’s arm and climbing Harry’s. He resolutely ignored the slightly tickling feeling of her scales. “ _You smell like much pain_ ,” she hissed softly into his ear as she coiled around his neck. “ _But I will work with you until you can smell like something else._ ”

Harry controlled the urge to laugh hysterically by clutching his basket. The handle creaked, but it didn’t break. And if it had, then he could have cast a _Reparo_ on it.

Unlike everything else. The snake was offering to take the place of his Mind-Healer? That was so broken that Harry didn’t know what to say.

“ _Harry_?”

“Potter?” Parkinson asked at the same time, eyes narrowed in the way she seemed to have of pretending she didn’t care. “Are you going to be all right?”

Harry opened his eyes and nodded. He had to be. Parkinson was right about something: he would grow more distant from James if he neglected his Parseltongue.

And that was the way he had to think of it, he thought, carefully reorienting himself, managing to skip over the bright-hot pain of losing James’s mother. The Parseltongue was something he was doing for his son. James would feel more comfortable because Harry also had a snake. This was like retiring from the Aurors or committing, as carefully as he could, to staying away from the Burrow when he knew Ginny was going to be there.

Just another thing he had to do because of what had happened in the past, if he wanted to raise a good son.

“ _You smell like hurt._ ”

Harry ignored that, nodded to Parkinson, said, “Thank you for bringing her to me, Miss Parkinson,” and then cast a Disillusionment Charm on Sela. It was going to be harder to forget about her than it was to hide her, especially with her tail tightening as Harry walked down the street away from Parkinson and Isabella. But that didn’t matter.

What did, except pushing forwards and loving his son?


	6. Parselmouth Solutions

Harry twisted, caught in another nightmare. In this one, he had walked into the Forbidden Forest, only to find that Voldemort wasn’t there waiting for him to surrender. Instead, he was there with Ginny tied at his feet in so many snakes that only her desperate eyes and the top of her nose showed.

Harry clenched his hands and said as calmly as he could, “I’m here now. You can let her go.”

“ _Why would I wish to?”_ Voldemort hissed back, his eyes bright with glee as he held out his wand towards the snakes. “ _Lucius has confessed to me that she was involved in the destruction of my Horcrux. She deserves some punishment for that, don’t you think_?”

Harry tried to get in the way of the spell, but it wasn’t a spell after all. It was simply a command, in Parseltongue, to the snakes to bite.

Ginny screamed as the fangs stabbed into her, and Harry could see her convulsing under the weight of all those bodies, as much as she could. He imagined the venom heating the blood in her veins, tearing apart her muscles, making her limbs swell up—

“ _Speaker, you are dreaming._ ”

Harry gasped and sat up with a sheet half-strangling him. He closed his eyes and massaged his forehead with one hand. His skin was cold and wet enough from sweat to make him feel as if he’d just climbed out of the bath, and he groped for his glasses, surprised that he _had_ fallen asleep at all. Most of the time, on nights when he couldn’t take the Diluted Dreamless Sleep potion because it would otherwise build up too much in his system, he simply lay staring at the ceiling until the sun rose.

Sela lifted her head from the side of his pillow. “ _You often have such dreams_?”

Harry shrugged and clawed the sheet away from him as he settled the glasses on his face. The dimness of his bedroom only lightened when he cast a _Lumos_ Charm. He settled back against the pillows and listened for the sound of James stirring, but everything was quiet. Apparently he hadn’t been screaming aloud.

“ _Harry. You have such violent dreams. I think they are a large part of the pain you smell of._ ”

Harry just shrugged and glanced down at the snake. “ _Probably so,_ ” he said, only speaking Parseltongue because if he spoke in English she would just pretend not to understand, and he would have to spend more time talking to her. “ _But I don’t know what to do about them other than sometimes take a portion of Dreamless Sleep._ ”

“ _Why not take it more often_?”

“ _It builds up in the body and can become poisonous._ ” Harry shifted to the side, intending to get up and walk to the bathroom, and received a nudge in the ribs from her head. Growling under his breath, he turned so that she could climb up and coil around his arm near his shoulder.

“ _A Parselmouth is immune to most venoms. Didn’t you know that_?”

“ _This is the same kind of thing. A Parselmouth might be immune to injected poison, but this is—it’s more like eating spoiled food._ ”

“ _You would be guarded even against that._ ”

Harry rolled his eyes and didn’t answer, just going to the bathroom and putting Sela down on the counter while he used the loo. She coiled and stared at herself in the mirror, head swaying back and forth a little. Harry glanced in the mirror himself, and then turned away sharply. He missed the days when it wouldn’t make him flinch to look at his own reflection.

“ _There must be a way to help you. There is a way. Let me into your dreams._ ”

Harry clenched the side of the doorway a moment, before walking back to pick her up. “ _I am hosting you under protest. I am unwilling to host you in my brain._ ”

Sela twisted her neck to the side so that they could make eye contact. Her eyes were a startling green, even after he’d been around her long enough that Harry would have thought he’d get used to it. “ _Wouldn’t it be worth it? To sleep without those kinds of nightmares_?”

Harry shook his head, his mind turning back to the image of Ginny buried under snakes. That had happened, hadn’t it? But only indirectly because of Voldemort. “ _If I don’t want you in my house, why would you think I want you in my head_?”

Sela said nothing else, and Harry returned to bed and lay looking at the ceiling, his hand smoothing restlessly over the blankets, until morning arrived.

*

“I’m glad to see that you accepted your Gryffindor snake, Potter.”

Potter just gave Draco a blank look and then turned and scanned the playroom. “Where is James?”

Draco stepped closer to Potter and stared at him, disturbed by how blank he was—how blank he _felt._ It was as if even his body warmth had been shut away behind some door Draco didn’t know how to unlock. Draco couldn’t sense his magic, either, which had been so resonant around him the last time he’d visited the school. Draco bit his lip and said softly, “Are you all right, Potter?”

Potter shrugged, ignoring the snake’s hiss of displeasure when the jolted her on his shoulder. “As fine as I can be when I was forced to accept a snake I didn’t want, sure.”

Draco caught his breath with irritation, then reminded himself that showing it was another way to confirm Potter in his belief that he was “right” and drive him further away. “Did something happen?”

“Besides Parkinson forcing the snake I didn’t want on me?”

Edwina twisted on Draco’s neck and stuck her head out of his shirt to hiss at Potter, “ _You are ungrateful for a gift that could have given you so much._ ”

Potter looked at her with those same blank eyes, and Draco had his answer as to what was wrong with Potter. He had locked away the anger he had shown Draco last time, the magic that made him who he was and lit his eyes from within, and now showed barely enough to go on walking around with. He seemed to have decided to respond to his own Parseltongue, and his snake, with passive rejection instead of active.

“Potter,” Draco said quietly, drawing Potter’s attention as he knew he wouldn’t have with a snap or command. “Will you please tell me what’s wrong?”

“Besides Parkinson forcing the snake I didn’t want on me?”

Draco swallowed against the impulse to roar at Potter. The blankness and repetition were designed to do that, he knew. Then Potter would have the satisfaction of knowing that he was in the “right.”

And there was one avenue of appeal open to him, as little as Draco liked to think about it. Potter should want this gift for _himself_ , and should value the power and companionship it held out for himself. But if Draco could only reach him through concern for his son, he would take it.

“How did James react to the snake joining your household?” he asked.

“ _My name is Sela, Speaker. Be kind enough to refer to me by it._ ”

Draco blinked and inclined his head. Sela had her tongue darting in and out in agitation, and Draco wondered if she knew it was generally considered bad manners among Parselmouths, at least from what Draco had learned as he began to establish his own schooling system, for a snake to introduce herself. A Parselmouth should do that.

But it was clear that waiting on Potter to do it was useless, and so Draco simply nodded and said, “ _Thank you for your name, Sela._ ” He glanced at Potter, who was staring out the window with his jaw clenched hard enough that Draco winced to think of what he was doing to his teeth.

“Potter.”

“Yeah.”

The word was like a jab, and Draco swallowed down his irritation once again. It was clear that too many people had failed Potter over the years, including the Mind-Healer who had betrayed all his secrets and the wife who had walked away. Draco would _not_ fall into their ranks.

“Edwina told me not long after we first met that you smelled of pain,” Draco said. “I’m sure your Sela has said the same thing. Is there anything I can do to ease that pain? I thought maybe giving James access to Parselmouth classes would help, but it doesn’t seem to have.”

Potter spent a long moment sitting with his fingers driving like knives into his knee. Finally, he glanced at Draco. The tightness had faded from his jaw, and the blankness from his eyes, but it had left a different kind of blankness behind, a polite kind that Draco knew must form the mask Potter used to shield himself from most people.

“No. You’ve been mostly polite, and it sounds like you’re a good, kind teacher to James and so are the other people who are educating them. That’s all I can ask for.”

“For James?”

“Of course.” For a second, Potter’s eyes flickered with what might have been wary confusion.

“And for yourself?” Draco sounded more urgent than was probably warranted, at least if he wanted Potter to be open to him, but Merlin, this was driving him _mad._ Potter radiated silent misery while trying not to radiate it, and Draco had seen too many Parselmouths like that in the past few years not to respond to it. “What can I do?”

“You could see if you could find someone else who wants to bond with my snake.” Potter ignored the long hiss from Sela. “As I said, I feel she was forced on me, and that’s hardly circumstances that would cause either of us to thrive.”

Draco closed his eyes. If this was what he had to do, he would do it, despite the fact that Potter could hardly participate in any ritual magic without a snake to steady him, and getting rid of Sela would probably hurt James. He had been full of tales about “Daddy’s snake” when he got to school today, although not enough to tell Draco her name.

But Draco couldn’t earn the trust of a man who had impaled himself on a thicket of blades, either.

“All right.”

 _“What are you doing, Speaker?”_ Sela demanded. Edwina spoke the same words at almost the same time, although she didn’t bother adding the title at the end.

“What?” Potter stared at him.

Draco blinked at the look on his face. It was the most open Potter had been since walking in today. _He totally thought we were going to make him work with us, with Sela. When was the last time he had someone on his side?_

“I’ll find someone else for Sela if you want me to,” Draco said calmly, and tried to avoid sounding like he was speaking to one of the children. Potter’s wide eyes had already narrowed in suspicion. He would strike out if he thought Draco was being condescending, or probably just refuse to listen. “I would prefer not to, of course. She’s established a bond with you, and that means there’s something in you that she finds valuable—”

“She just wants to work with someone who was in Gryffindor House,” Potter interrupted. Draco fumed, but held his peace. “There must be someone else who was. Or who would find the honor of working with a Gryffindor snake greater than they—who would find it an honor.”

“ _There are not many of you._ ” Sela’s tail vibrated like a rattlesnake’s for a moment. “ _I told you that before._ ”

“ _We will try to find one for you,_ ” Draco hissed to soothe her, and then went back to considering Potter. His face had frozen in the kind of mask Draco had worn himself when he didn’t know what was happening and which way he should react. “In the meantime, Potter, I can take care of her.” He held out his arm.

*

Harry stared at the arm. He had no idea what to say. The last thing he would have expected was for Malfoy to make some kind of sacrifice for him, even if he clearly didn’t approve of Harry’s decision.

When was the last time someone had done something like this for him?

Memories of Ron and Hermione leaped to mind, but they were all from years ago. They hadn’t interfered in his divorce from Ginny, but they had accepted what Harry had said about it, and that he blamed himself. They had offered comfort and babysitting for James and to stay with him, but—

He had never _let_ them. There was no other word for it. He had seen their outstretched hands and slapped them away.

Malfoy’s outstretched hand couldn’t be slapped away. He wasn’t doing this for James, or because Harry was his old friend, or because they were in-laws. In fact, Harry was pretty sure that Malfoy would argue it would be the best thing for James if Sela stayed with Harry and their family. He was doing it because he wanted to help _Harry._

_He wants his own power. He wants me to agree to be the face of Parselmouths and part of his ritual circle._

But then, would he have agreed to take the snake away instead of arguing to try and make Harry accept her?

“Are you all right, Potter? You look like you’re going to be sick.”

Harry held up his hand and swallowed, and Malfoy fell silent, watching him narrowly. He had pulled his arm back to his side, but from the way it was crooked, he obviously expected to reach out and accept Sela’s weight any moment.

“ _I want to stay with you_ ,” Sela hissed, sounding petulant. “ _I want to help you with your nightmares and your Parseltongue and the way you smell of pain._ ”

Harry stared at her in turn. Sela stretched up to meet his eyes, although Harry suspected she got more information about him from her darting tongue.

Maybe her wanting to help him with Parseltongue wasn’t just because she was determined to have a Speaker of her own and participate in ritual circles. And helping him with nightmares and pain…

_Has it been so long since I had someone who wanted to help me that I didn’t recognize it? Or was it like it was with Ron and Hermione, and people wanted to help me, but I turned them away because I was so focused on James?_

“Potter?”

Malfoy definitely sounded wary now. Harry glanced at him and saw that his arm was still crooked at his side, but this time at an angle that looked more like he was about to draw his wand.

“I don’t want you to take Sela.” Harry said it with dry lips that he licked, hard. He wondered abstractly if he looked like a snake, too, darting his tongue out.

Malfoy smiled as if that pleased him, but kept watching Harry. “What changed your mind?”

“ _You should tell me, too. I would like hearing about it._ ”

Harry raised a hand to touch Sela’s back. He didn’t entirely trust her yet, but at least he might make her quiet down. And it seemed to work. She said nothing further, only darted her tongue out again to touch his hand.

“You were offering me something that really seemed to be for me,” Harry said. “Not for James or because it would gain you power. For me.”

Malfoy’s eyes widened a little. He sat there as if he didn’t know what to say. Then he murmured, “I’m surprised that you’re not accusing me of trying to manipulate you so that you would want to keep Sela and eventually join our ritual circles.”

Harry shrugged. “It didn’t sound that way. If only because you couldn’t be sure I’d do either of those things. And I still don’t really want to practice ritual magic with the rest of you.”

Malfoy nodded. His voice when he spoke next sounded as though he was trying to urge the words past a loose tooth. “Are you—it’s really been that long since someone did something specifically for you?”

Harry turned his head, hearing James’s voice coming down the corridor. If there was one conversation he didn’t want James to witness, it was this one.

“Potter.”

“That I allowed myself to notice,” Harry said quietly, and stood up. “See you later, Malfoy.”

Sela lashed her tail around his neck as Harry went to meet James. Harry ignored her. He had agreed to keep her because she did seem to want to help him. That wasn’t the same thing as giving in and doing _everything_ she wanted. He thought of his dream of Ginny being poisoned by snakes.

_How can I rejoice in Parseltongue if it might consume me later?_

But if he held Sela to a working partnership, and pushed back, and worked with her on the nightmares—well, she couldn’t betray him to anyone except another Parselmouth, unlike that bloody Mind-Healer. And Harry would prefer it if he could stop feeling this way, always unmoored and exhausted and hurt.

“Daddy!”

Harry bent down and wrapped his arms around James as he burst out of the corridor into the schoolroom. He buried his face against his son’s hair and breathed in the soft sweetness of it.

And wasn’t that what really mattered? Being a good father for James? He would be a better one if he wasn’t in pain all the time.

*

Draco watched Potter and his son go, and tried not to show how shaken he was, although from the way Edwina coiled closer to him, she could sense it. Scorpius and Charlie were giving him thoughtful glances, too.

_All it took was—offering to do something for him._

Draco didn’t know what was worse, the idea that offers had been so rare that Potter hadn’t recognized them, or that all it took was something so small to change Potter’s mind.

_Shit. He must be—_

Draco stroked Edwina’s scales with one soft fingertip as he turned to take Scorpius back home.

_I didn’t even know how much pain he was in._


End file.
